Viscous products such as condiments in the food industry or lotions and cosmetics used in the personal care and cosmetic industries are typically provided in bottles, vials, jars, tubes, or other vessels with narrow necks. When most of the contents of such a container have been dispensed, it is often difficult or impossible to remove the remaining material using available tools such as spoons, knives, spatulas, or similar items. A considerable amount of product therefore always remains in the vessel and is discarded, thereby wasting a substantial amount of good, useable product.
Past known devices have provided various solutions for removing materials from the interior wall or bottom section of such containers. U.S. Pat. No. 4,627,128 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,987,635 are generally designed with lower blade members that are only used with cylindrically shaped containers. Other devices offer blade members designed for scraping the walls of cylindrical containers of a specific size, as in U.S. Pat. No. 5,345,642.
Some devices are simply not effective as disclosed. U.S. Design Pat. No. D278402 discloses a bottle spoon, but the receptacle portion of the spoon is small, and does not disclose a handle that may be appropriately shaped to scrape leftover material on the side of a bottle, as the handle appears to have a width that is equivalent to the width of the receptacle portion of the spoon. Additionally, the top of the receptacle is flush with the top of the handle portion, also potentially hindering effective gathering of material from the side of a container. Some of the disclosed devices, such as the device disclosed in U.S. Pub. No. 2012/0280525, have very small receptacles, and the device would have to be inserted into a bottle many times in order to remove a substantial and usable amount of product.
Other devices can scrape the interior walls of a variety of containers, but fail to provide a means to efficiently clean materials from the bottom section of the container, or do not provide support for the contents of the receptacle during removal from the vessel. U.S. Pat. No. 4,381,576 discloses such a utensil. Additionally, the patent does not disclose a handle that may have an offset to facilitate removal of residue from the sides of a container.
Other potential solutions include chemically coating the interior of containers with materials that prevent residue from sticking to the container walls. However such materials have yet to be proven safe and effective with varying container surfaces and with products in the food or personal care and cosmetic industries.
Accordingly, a need exists for a tool or a device that can be used to recover leftover material in vessels having narrow openings.